Lift10 news

The Lift10 videos are available in our archive. Thanks to the system developed by our partner Klewel, videos are synchronized with the slides of the speaker. You can see both at the same time (or switch to video only/slide only mode) and skip to any slide you like. Pretty convenient to go directly to where you want.

The most popular talks so far: Russell Davies (and his big red button) on printing the internet out, Basile Zimmerman on technology and cultural differences in China, Rahaf Harfoush on the technological and social trends impacting politics, Julian Zbar on how and why are the current generation is staying connected, Fabian Hemmert on making computers stiff, scratchy and stubborn.

Tinker.it put Russell Davies' big red button (used during his legendary Lift10 presentation) for sale today.

Russel Davies, one of the co-founders of Newspaper Club asked us to build him a dedicated large red button that would he would push to advance his slides for his talk during the LIFT 10 conference. (Video here). This was so that he could illustrate a point about interfaces not being so discreet and invisible, but a screen-less way to interact with the world, when all the newest devices are constantly demanding our attention. We thought he was right, and we built it for him.

Now sold here.

You can see Russel's talk here:

My article about technological failures has been published in the last issue of ACM interactions. It addresses the possibility to use failure as design tactic:

“failures and mistakes are important too because they are implicit signs of a need or problem that requires a solution. The examination of failures reveals what is commonly referred to in HCI as the “gulf of execution,” i.e., the difference between the user’s expected actions to achieve a goal and the actual required actions

However, my quirky mind-set left me wondering about the role of failure in design research: If problems and mistakes are so interesting and insightful, why not be a bit more bold and enlist them as a design tactic? I am suggesting the conscious design of “questionable” prototypes to investigate user experience. (…) In doing so, what kind of insights can be derived from leading people in the wrong direction?“

Link

At the last Lift conference in Geneva, we teamed-up with frog design to conduct a new sort of partnership: a design research study of the conference itself. The point of this was to understand the participants' experience and to collect insights about what was working well and not so well about the conference.

We were interested to see if a design research approach could be relevant and bring feedback to re-design our events. frog design constituted a team of researchers with Adam Richardson, Elizabeth Roche and Eleanor Davies and Till Grusche who came to the conference and spent some time investigating the conference participants experience. Research techniques ranged from interviews to observations, workshops and diary.

Results from this study are now available on Slideshare:

For us, this report is full of interesting insights that help us to design upcoming events (and Lift11 more specifically).

Thanks a lot for the frog team as well as Tim Leberecht for allowing this to happen!

For the french-speaking lifters among you: France Culture made a very interesting radio show about Lift10. You can listen to it here.

Lift10 took place in Geneva from May 5-7. The group of students that won free passes offered by the City of Geneva to participate in Lift are blogging their notes and insights from Lift10...

Sandra Davila shares her thoughts about the session on Generations and Technologies (edited by Sachin Gaur)

How will longevity affect technology usage? Is there an imaginary border between digital natives and digital immigrants? What is a 20 years old perspective on how technology affects his generation? These are some of the issues discussed during the session of Generations and Technology.

Prospects for defeating aging altogether

The first talk by Aubrey de Grey from the SENS foundation discusses the human causes of death and the progress made in postponing it. In brief his presentation argued that with molecular and cellular repair humans would be living in average 30 years more. How? You can go ahead and read Mr. Aubrys book:

Doomed to be forever young? A social archaeology of the 'digital natives'

Antonio Casilli's talk argues that terms like natives and immigrants have stretched a border between two imaginary generations. Casilli is a sociologist that does a semiotic analysis on how the occidental society interacts with computers. Below I share some remarks and concepts relevant to his presentation:

* Reterritorialization. - The expansion of the spaces that computers take in the home.

* Miniaturization. - The effect of computers becoming smaller.

* The young boy was associated with technology since early stage of introduction of technology.

* Computers have being targeted to younger audiences for economical, political and cultural reasons.

o Economical: Younger generations buy high added value services.

o Cultural: Technology changes our perception of time.

o Political: It echoes a general climate of ageism.

In conclusion the divide between digital immigrants and natives reproduces the same forms of social exclusions.

How and why is the current generation staying connected?

Finally Julian Zbar presented his opinion on how his generation interacts with technology. Important remarks shared by Julian about "his generation" were:

* They expect to get information and entertainment for free and everywhere. Though he is aware that this model can't sustain itself, other members of his generation are not.

* Connectivity is no longer a luxury is a necessity. Being connected is what is most important.

* Short attention span.

* They don't want to be bored; they are searching for things to do. They are never doing anything. He compares his generation with Inspector Gadget; a young adult will always have something a piece of software/technology to entertain him/her.

* They move fast to the next things.

* They don't like to choose; if it's of not interest they move on to the next thing.

* He describes Facebook as everybody summary of his or her lies and presents is in headline form. He compares is it to being a paparazzi.

* Is not “facebook” that is important but what that they can find all their networks there?

* Technology is no longer confined to geeks.

Julian’s perspective was compromised because of his privileged background, and the lack of recognition of his own bias towards his generation. This said I believe he contributed important remarks of how younger generations see the Internet. For example the encrusted perception that content in the web is free.

How will the current paradigm shift with the expansion of human life span? As we go on with the dichotomy between native and immigrants, asking this question takes importance. Change will happen and we see it more and more as older generations “catch up” to the digital transformation. In conclusion the three conferences shared meaningful insights of how should we consider generations in the design for the web.

Lift10 took place in Geneva from May 5-7. The group of students that won free passes offered by the City of Geneva to participate in Lift are blogging their notes and insights from Lift10...

Anna Jobin talks about the first part of the Stories' session (edited by Sachin Gaur)

Third day of LIFT, Friday morning's Stories' session: three speakers, three different backgrounds, three Stories. A journey from what the technology we have can be used for, to why said technology is not neutral, and back (or rather: forward!) to the question of what to do with what we have got.

On OhmyNews, launched in 2000 by
Yeon-ho Oh as one of the first citizen journalism organizations in the world, citizens are reporters. Every day, about 200 new articles appear on OhmyNews: countless people have written more than 1000 stories and contributed more than 100 top stories. Behind these figures is a passion every conventional newspaper can only dream of. Passion is the key to this participation, but where does it come from? Oh Yeon-ho is clear about it: it comes from the same source where people find passion for citizen participation in general. Whether it is taking part, on a rainy Sunday somewhere in rural Switzerland, in the legislation process of a "Landsgemeinde"... whether it is living in Interlaken and, thus, contributing to the William Tell play for a whole season... writing articles for OhmyNews... at the very beginning is the individual decision of not being a spectator but a direct participant in the process of making our societies better. Is citizen participation always good, and is passion all it takes? At OhmyNews, Oh Yeon-ho is looking for people who participate for what he calls the "right" reason, which is a commitment to the matter (and not the desire for fame). And sometimes, there is need for facilitating the process of turning passion into participation. Taking this role seriously, OhmyNews employs, for instance, many editors who fact-check information, evaluate and redact articles, thus ensuring responsibility, credibility and sustainability. Because responsible, credible and sustainable is what Yeon-ho Oh would like direct participation to be.

The use of technology (OhmyNews) impacting the culture we live in (by facilitating participation).Basile Zimmermann, a China specialist, confirms with a tangible example: the knowledge about the use of strokes in written Chinese risks getting lost somewhere between an English keyboard and a phonetic typing. But the second speaker shows main topic shows the other way of looking at it: how our culture shapes the technology we build and the way we are using it. Because of production history, code is based on the English language. All non-English signs more complicated to use, thus other languages and cultures are discriminated. And the predominance of Western culture does not stop with the issue of coding. Google trying to operate in China with a logo that gives English letters more importance than the Chinese language might be perceived as one more Western company keen on Chinese money - because China has a long history of being exploited for economical reasons. You are not evil? But surely not taking into account the 17 alleged unequal treaties almost all Chinese know... What about a Chinese company, then? The comparison of the popular social network kaizin001 with facebook shows how much privacy issues, advertisement logic and networking attitude differ from what we might be taking for granted. Technology is culture, neutrality does not exist. And with a rapidly growing economy and a huge well-educated population, China will soon be a leader, changing production history. How will technology look on the day it is re-invented by the Chinese to fit their own needs? Not only might the concept of keyboards have changed, but also our legal system, since one of the central questions is how we want to live with technology.

How do we want to live with technology? How do we want to live with what the future holds for us? How do we want the future to be? Well... does it matter? If you ask Jamais Cascio, yes, it does. James Cascio is a futurist and - since we all want to know about the future - he says we are all futurists, too. Futurists can do prediction, which holds the danger of legacy futures: if you have a vision of the future, you hang on to it, because it provides some kind of meaning. They may test strategies: pick one, test how it works in different environments and use the results for scenario planning. Or they can anticipate by making us aware that the future is in our hands. James Cascio chooses to show how much the future is something we can create. As we become more powerful, the impact of our choices becomes more extraordinary. At a moment in history, where the decisions we are making will affect us for centuries to come, we can act and we have a choice, including the choice not to act. Things we are doing matter in the future and we should ask ourselves if we will have been good ancestors. We all have the capacity of foresight and the need to look ahead. Thus, with our sensibility, we are the immune system of our future. And the future is something we create, not something we have. All of our tools are manifestations of our ethics, our culture and of us being human. We can create the future we want. And this knowledge should be shared. Because our lives are long and our planet is unique.

The two "Open Stage" presentations could not be more accurate. Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino from Tinker London hit the mark (or should I say: the red button?) by saying "It's not what you do, it's why you do it" as well as "It is the little details that matter". And Fabian Hemmert, exploring resistance, challenging by himself an entire paradigm when making computers stiff, scratchy and stubborn... Conclusion: amazement, alert, humour and goosebumps throughout the Stories' session. Thank you, contributors. Thank you, Lift.

Lift10 took place in Geneva from May 5-7. The group of students that won free passes offered by the City of Geneva to participate in Lift are blogging their notes and insights from Lift10...

Alexander Gnoyke shares her thoughts about the workshop of Hacking Venture Capital by Fred Destin (edited by Sachin Gaur)

Fred Destin is a venture capitalist and one of the seven partners at Atlas Venture where he focuses primarily on early-stage investments in disruptive consumer-facing innovation. Fred is also a regulator contributor to Seedcamp, which Atlas has been supporting since the outset, and one of the board members of Seedcamp.

His 2h workshop was attended by an audience of 47 people aged between 30 and 40 years, under which you could find people like the Business Model Generation book editor Alexander Osterwalder and Tom Hume, who is a mobile phone software expert.

Fred began his workshop on how to do a 5min Pitch in front of potential Venture Capitalists and used ERPLY, a recently VC-backed company, as a base case. After 15min of preparation 2 teams, each having 4 members, pitched in front of the audience and got some very constructive and honest feedback by Fred. Then, for the second part of the workshop, negotiation, the 4 members of each team were split up into 2 entrepreneurs and 2 venture capitalists to simulate the fundraising negotiation process.

The most important and partly surprising learning outcomes for me were:

For a successful pitch you need a very strong intro, e.g. “ERPLY will be the “Skype for business software”.”

You should be able to “summarize your business on the back of one business card” by Sequoia Capital.

During a pitch do not include that you want to sell, e.g. 30% of company’s equity for 2mn, because you may sell it too cheap and limit room for negotiation. Since VCs like to do valuations, you should let them do their work.

To address big markets is not only important for haveing great exits. If a company changes its strategy, it will be much easier to do it if being in a niche.

Do not waste too much time on talking about clients and suppliers, instead sell your own story.

Finish your presentation with a strong conclusion.

Do not write any business plan, because no one will ever read it. But a one pager or a short presentation of around 15 slides will be much better.

Tell the VC on what you will spend the money for the next 12 to 18 months and set up clear mile-stones, because an entrepreneur will need money again after this period.

Have around 10 to 15 Key-Point-Indicators (KPIs) that measure your companies’ success. A good source of inspiration is Dave McClure's Startup Metrics for Pirates.

You should also tell the VC about your concerns e.g. on how to scale, how to brand, how to expand etc. This will involve the VC much more and might get him on the boat because he feels to be needed and can add real value to the business.

Since the stock option pool (SOP), which is need to incentivize future employees, lowers a company’s effective valuation, instead you should always keep an eye on Price-per-Share and forget about the pre-money valuation.

Find people who can really help as members of the board. It is different if someone has a big network but is not sharing it, especially Seniors might not have so much time as Juniors.

Legal things down-size any risk, an entrepreneur should not take it too personal, it will protect every stake holder including one’s self.

To have a founder who stays over the whole life-span as a CEO in his company is rare to happen. It is just a different game to work for a SME or a bigger corporate. Self-awareness and anticipation is quite important to make sure the management team will also be capable in the future.

Regarding my opinion these are the most important issues that were raised throughout the workshop. But is only an excerpt of which you have to consider when you will pitch and negotiate with VCs. To ensure your success you must have a look on the fantastic Prezi presentations on Fred’s blog-post: LIFT10: Workshop on Hacking Venture Capital

Lift10 took place in Geneva from May 5-7. The group of students that won free passes offered by the City of Geneva to participate in Lift are blogging their notes and insights from Lift10...

Thierry Blancpain and Christoph Derndorfer talks about "Let's create a product " workshop (edited by Sachin Gaur)

Before the workshop the group was split in two groups, a product
development team and a group of users giving feedback. For half an hour
before the official start of the workshop, the five brave members of the
product development team met with Christian to invent a product on the
fly. After fifteen minutes of coming up with ideas, they voted on the
presented ideas and decided to go forward with an annotation-tool for
the web.

Another fifteen minutes later and they had an interface mockup as well
as a more defined product. This is when the users joined the workshop
and after a short intro by Christian, the product was presented.
Christian added that the goal of the workshop was to go through a few
product development cycles, share information and knowledge about it and
create more transparency regarding the product design and brainstorming
process.

The invented product was planned as a tool to annotate articles on the
web. Those annotations can then be shared, searched, or displayed on a
timeline. There was also the idea of the ability to link annotations to
each other.

After the prototype had been presented, the usergroup started to give
feedback. The main feedback points were:
– Privacy: public and private annotations.
– Annotated content that changes after an annotation is placed and how
to deal with it.
– The ability to annotate more than just text, for example places,
people or other things. Even the option to annotate annotations.
– The ability to rank annotations.
– Video or audio annotations.

The usergroup was then given a 20 minutes coffee break while the product
team worked on and developed version two of the product.

For round two, because of time constraints, the product team focused on
two main aspects: privacy and rating. The user interface was reworked to
introduce a privat/public annotation option, as well as a simple rating
function.

Another round of feedback was given, including the request of multiple
layers of privacy settings, how spam and unwanted advertisement could be
avoided – through the voting and a respective algorithm to interpret
very negative ratings – as well as the needed complexity of the
user-interface.

Christian noted that at Google, because they can quickly prototype an
idea, adding a feature is easy. The hard part of product development is
cutting down features and user-interface complexity to arrive at a
simple and efficient end-product.

This is how the end-result of the workshop looked. Still a very raw
draft of how this app could function, but it already allows people to
quickly and easily grasp the idea.

Pierre Spring of LIIP, member of the product development team in the
workshop, noted that the reality of this workshop meant that to create a
product in such a short time, one has to focus broadly on the product
without the ability to discuss or think about all the details involved.
It was also mentioned that the product development team members were not
able to follow their own interests, but had to work inside the given
framework and accept the constraints in time and freedom of choice. So
accepting that not all of your ideas will make it is an important aspect
of the process. At the same time this enables that the concept you end
up with is very likely significantly more amazing than what you started
out with.

The workshop was a great chance to have a small look into the life of a
product developer. Christian led the workshop with a safe hand, without
overreaching and dominating the discussion and feedback process. The
insights he provided on his own experiences in developing products at
Google was fascinating and covered a broad variety of aspects from
getting input from outsiders to how ideas are shared and discussed
within Google.

So aside from the hardship of waking up after a short night (since the
famous Lift fondue took place on Wednesday evening) all the participants
seemed to enjoy the workshop and actively participated in the feedback
and product development process. This led to a constant and productive
back-and-forth between the product team and the rest of the group.

Thierry's final thoughts: As a graphic designer, it was great to see how
similar the process of developing a product and a piece of design are.
In the end it is all about kicking off the process of idea generation
and keeping up a positive vibe so that no team member feels left out or
harshly rebuffed.

Christoph's final thoughts: This workshop was definitely one of the
highlights of LIFT10 for me. It combined an interactive hands-on
approach with excellent guidance and some nice anecdotes from
Christian's work at Google.

The über-talented Ivo Naepflin was again making the "official" pictures of Lift, check our Flickr account to see all of them!

More pictures.